lauren-rWhisper

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To RememberI feel the heat of your shoulder bleeding into mine. We are laying in the grass. No- we are laying in my bed. No- your bed. The TV is on. You fell asleep in my lap playing video games. I'm wearing red lipstick. Moments earlier, I arched my back like a kitten and took a picture of us sprawled over one another. You weren't looking. My lipstick is red. My shirt is red. My skirt has flowers. Your hair is bleached on the top. I peel the blankets from us and now it's grown out, curving over your forehead in a w. You're wearing all these pukka shell and wooden necklaces. I don't know what gave you the idea. It doesn't match. I love you. I love you so much I giggle just tracing the curve of your nose. We watch YouTube videos slowed down and laugh until we fall asleep, your hip bones pressed into the small of my back. I open my eyes and we're back in 2015. We're eating pizza, but not too much, because your stomach problems are just beginning. You accidentally say you love me back when we part at sunset. The gazebo is in the background. It's always in the background. I walk away and find myself back at your door. You struggle with the key for a moment. We just got off the bus. You couldn't drive yet. I saw your dog, pet her on the top of her head, nose turned away from her rotting teeth. Your bird sings when we walk away and we laugh at how he hates us. I stop laughing and he's dead. Your mom threw him away. You were more heartbroken than you told your friends while you laughed in the library. I shut the door behind me and you're shaking your head no a year later, me asking if we can talk, last weeks tears prickling my mind. You say you'll think about it. You don't. I do.
1
May 7, 2018
καταφιλέω(The day I met you, I relented: “Friend, do what you are here to do.”) / I flicked the gas card between my fingers. We had $50 to do whatever we wanted, maybe even take that aquarium trip up to Boston we had talked about so much. Your birthday was a month ago, you were then 17. This was the second birthday of yours we shared together and before you left- not before I told you to drive carefully, my love, and before you forgot all the leftover cake at my house- you kissed my cheek. I laughed into the naked air over my bed- Judas. You are my Judas. The Bible never taught me anything. / I don't think you know what anger can do to a person. You see, I haven't cried about you once. Not once, in one year. I have laid in the same spot where we first kissed, and I have not imagined your clumsy lips over mine. I realized then you could love something more than yourself- as yourself. The heat from your shoulder never bled out of my body. But, I do not imagine much more.
7
Apr 7, 2018
A Year and a Universe AwayI dream of you often. / At the start, it was always me yelling. I’d run up to you, teary-eyed, (not for the first time) and asked if you knew how you’d hurt me. Your face would be blank, your lips slightly parted. I felt like a rabid dog, muzzled by the scraps left of my humanity, but ready to lunge off to administer rough justice. My teeth gnashed and chipped when caught by each other. I felt my hands twist into fists, my eyes the hollow barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. / Sometimes you’d come to me, haloed by the morning light in my bedroom. Sometimes you’d apologize, or just be there. Things would seem fine. The hint of tension in my chest was nearly imperceptible in the face of the the rapture I felt, the face of you. I’d trace your knuckles, staring down at the half moons of your nails, cut to the quick. I cannot remember your expression, but I remember your warm breath. I’d wake up and say I didn’t like it, as I try to drift off and dream again.
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Apr 7, 2018
Heaven is CallingSnow falls onto the frozen lakes of your glasses. I can't see your breath through the cloud of mine anymore. You're silent, but I can still feel your voice in my fingertips. Your hands verse worry into the folds of your jacket, clutched like a lifeline. / Words don’t come to us, we are two people, breathing out our lives into a world so vacant, honeyed and infinite- we will perpetually feel that we are a few years and a universe away from not alone. / And I’ll recall nothing of the tragedy that beats infinitely behind the bones of your chest- our chests- so fallible, yet drumming its knuckles on its living casket, so fervently, you’d think it knew nothing of sadness or longing or death. I feel that to be true sometimes. I am now only traumatized by soft kisses on my cheekbones, and the sound of laughter inside parked cars.
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Feb 8, 2018
The 5 People I Have Met in the Middle*I. He Will Refuse To Find a Way Up* / A fifth hole in the wall this week opens and I crawl inside it while your knuckles are still freshly bleeding. I will find myself grasping at straws to justify your rage. You reflect it back onto me, an uneasy mirror that makes me want to tear open my own cathartic hands and find what made me so angry so long ago. I shake my head. I have loved you. I have helped you grow. I have been the soil you have stretched roots in and the fields of lavender you have scorched. I let myself let you go before I crawl into another drywall void. / *II. She Will Not Be What You Remember*
36
Feb 8, 2018
Handle with CareThe fragile space between each rib, with skin draped over it like a table cloth. / The fragile space between scars, between your eyes, between our hearts when you're in my arms. The fragile space between almost and never. / Why is it that so much in life is fragile?
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Oct 16, 2017
Lovely, LovelyYou're gonna do this like, / Johnny Cash. / Pills, pills, and public drunkenness until
12
Sep 25, 2017
BloatedThe people she adores, / She cuts them all into pieces, / Skewered,
11
Sep 25, 2017
ProverbThe truth / Will set you free / But;
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Sep 25, 2017
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